Belina
by AzaleaRill
Summary: Phantom crossed with the fairy tale Thumbelina
1. Chapter 1

" _I can't go on living like this, like a mole_ _in a burrow!_ " - Erik

* * *

Imagine not an opera house, but a craggy cliff of boulder jutting, a singularity, from the tall grass of a wide meadow. No noisy rumbled of carriage on cobbled streets, only the violin hum of crickets in this orchestra pit. City rats there are none, only a lone mouse combing through the grass for the errant wind-blown seed.

She made sure to stay in the dark, stone shadows, ever wary of the raptors that haunted the bright skies. Mouse shivered for a moment in an alcove, fluffing her fur against the chill of deep autumn. She rattled the bag slung around her neck and shoulder, calculating its weight against the signs of winters length. A mouse alone beneath a tonnage of stone did not need much.

There would have been no mouse-y presence that winter if, in the next moment when she slipped around the boulder's edge toward home, the long winged raptor had not been otherwise engaged. Instinct bred deep into her unconscious moved Mouse's legs before she even had a thought of escape and she was deep under a narrow protrusion hunkering in the cold mud. She could still the bird of prey from her hiding place and that the large bird was worrying at a crevasse low on the stone wall.

With a short, sharp beak and talons made for pouncing and piercing, the raptor was no match for the depth of the dark, little space it's quarry had secreted itself. Mouse saw blood on its talons which spoke to the bird's frustration at losing its prey and the determination to get the morsel back. But with the sun sinking low and the time drawing near when larger hunters would be about, the kestrel gave up and went looking for an easier meal.

Mouse dared not move from her own safe shelter until the whir of normal insect noise told her the avian was well away. She fought the sucking mud that gripped her hands and feet, her fur heavy with the gunky clay-dirt that dried to a hard plaster. A long night of grooming lay ahead of her.

But first, there was the creature in the secreted in the cleft.

If left alone, it would draw carrion hunters and all the sorts of undesirables that followed such. Her oasis would be over-run and she would have to deal with many unwanted visitors.

Mouse easily climbed the short way to the dark crack in the stone and slipped inside. The setting sun and depth of the space made visibility impossible, but the sickly smell of blood was guide enough. There was also the dense aroma of deep earth, an oddity for something that had sought the security of unyielding stone. She reached forward to with a seeking hand and her tiny heart nearly stopped when a grip that was nothing but claws wrapped around her wrist.


	2. Chapter 2

His velveteen coat was the only loveliness Mole ever had. It was extremely soft and supple and Mouse could not resist running her fingers through the warm denseness of it. Otherwise, he was an unhappy collection of strangeness. He had no face to speak of, only small, useless eyes that saw nothing but the changes from light to dark, a hairless nose, and a mouth now distorted by a talon slash that opened his cheek and bisected his lips into a permanent grimace that showed the small, yellow points if his teeth. He was extremely thin for his species, making Mouse wonder why the raptor had even gone for such a sickly looking tidbit. The bird had somehow got hold of him and ripped his chest into parallel slanting bands before he escaped to where she'd found him, his short fingers tipped with long, wicked looking claws seeking her out.

Mouse let his bloody wounds dry to ugly crusts as he lay on a bed of dried grass in her little house. She knew that if he were meant to live, nature had its own methods of healing even the most grievous hurts. There was still much life in him yet as was evident in the fact that his whole body flinched at a sound louder than a rustling stir and his face turning to seek out the shadow of her form whenever she moved about.

Winter set in within a few days and Mouse woke one morning to snow outside her door and the painful discovery that Mole seemed to have died in the night. He was curled in upon himself, arms and legs drawn close, back bowed and face hidden in the curve of his arms. She sat beside him and touched him lightly, relieved beyond her own understanding to feel the warmth of life still emanating from the dark brown fur.

During the night, he had slipped into the dark sleep of hibernation - a state more healing than anything she could have done.

Now she could comb the dried blood and deeply embedded dirt from his coat without fear of him lashing out with those fearsome claws. Mouse knew he used them to dig deep into the earth, but they could do as much damage in his own defense as had been visited upon him by the raptor's talons. She soon lost her fear, though, as during the deep cold of winter he would sometimes surface from the depths of sleep and stretch luxuriously under her ministrations. Then, the newly formed scar tissue on his wounds would crack and bleed and Mole would curl upon himself again and seek the comfort of painless sleep.

Mouse took to laying at his back during the cold nights, absorbing the warmth of his body into the grey, wiry fur of her own. So in early spring, when she suddenly awoke shivering, it was more than a physical cold that came over her to find him gone. She found only a deep, dark hole where he had been.

Mole had heard the call of the deep earth and followed.

Mouse, in her small existence, hadn't known loneliness before. It was a concept that required being surrounded by life that was more than predators and insects and tall grass. Mole had filled that gap and then left it a raw wound when he'd gone. She fought against the ache of it for a time, it found she couldn't seem breath without looking for his scent in the air. She dropped down into the deep hole so she wouldn't suffocate.

Bio-luminescence, which she had discovered long ago, was her light in the dark, slanting tunnel. Mouse thought to just follow this simple trail the end of which would surely lead her to Mole.

It was he who found Mouse several hours later after she had run out of light and become hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of tunnels he had dug. Mole took her back through the hole into her little house but did not stay. Neither did he block up the entrance to keep her out and that was concession enough for Mouse. She soon learned how to find him in the rambling dark - she also learned that he was than the simply "different" Mole she had sheltered through the winter.


	3. Chapter 3

Summer rolled over the stone oasis and heated the rock so the air rippled mirage-like around it.

Mole dug deeper into the cool earth. When autumn set in again, he found the deepest point where the great rock had settled and rounded out a wide burrow that was kept relatively warm by the heat the stone absorbed from the sun and. Mouse had employed the same artifice in choosing her own home for it's cool darkness in the summer and radiating warmth in the winter.

The wounds on Mole's chest healed to pale, craggy, hairless scars. As for the cleft in his face, it remained a wet gash that continually festered, the flesh around it becoming raw until, like a spreading infection, it eclipsed half his face.

Winter, in its way, came around again. Mouse would have curled around Mole as he settled into hibernation, but she couldn't stay so far below for so long. Also, she had neglected her foraging and was now forced out into the cold to search for food. There were a few spots she knew that wind-born seeds accumulated and she headed to one now hoping for a bounty.

The boot had been cemented into the ground on its side by years of weathering and the grass roots that had grown through the rotting leather on the underside. The hide on the topside had stood up to the elements and so far resisted complete breakdown besides the wind and rain. It's open end caught most of the air movement across the field and often collected small detritus against the inside wall of the sole, including a tasty tidbit or two as Mouse had discovered. Once, to her delight, she found a small, sprouting acorn that, had it not need up as her lunch, would have taken root and lifted the boot skyward by late spring.

Entering the open mouth of the boot, she peered into the interior warily. Light coming through various holes and cracks latticed the interior with odd shadows. More than once Mouse had visited this local and fled in fear of her life from lizards, snakes and even a spider that had been as large as herself. She almost turned tail to run when she squinted into the darkness that made the toe of the boot a dark cave and saw a pale roundness among the leaves and dry stalks that did not belong.

The temptation of a few dry wheats heads overcame her inclination to run.

Fanning her grey ears wide, Mouse padded toward the bounty on silent feet. She could pick up on the slightest sound and had reflexes that could move her so fast it would be as if she were never there. The pale shape obscured by the wind blown chaff didn't move though. Oddly enough, the pinkish whiteness of it reminded Mouse of her own tiny, hairless babies born and gone so long ago - but this creature was as large as herself it seemed - no mere mousling. More curious than cautious now, Mouse actually reached over and brushed aside some of the blanketing debris. The strangest creature lay shivering, gazing up at her with the clearest of blue eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

The first time Mouse took her down into the tunnels, Belina thought they were a natural occurrence. After they'd traveled past through and past several side tunnels, she saw that they were carved through the earth with too much precision and had to have been created by a one with a strangely intricate mind. This was especially reinforced when the network ended and they came into a large chamber bordered on one side by the underground edge of the huge rock that sat over them.

By the light of the bio-luman Mouse carried, Belina saw that the stone walls were covered in writing.

She pressed her hand against the warm wall and it came away imprinted with the chalk markings. It's music, she wanted to tell Mouse, but her friend was chattering away at something in a dim corner. Belina traced the notes with her finger, following the rhythm of the rough melody to where it suddenly stopped. She blinked as if coming out of a trance and only just held back a startled cry that might have become a hysterical scream if she didn't choke it.

Mouse was frustratedly prying at the long clawed fist of a dark furred creature just taller than herself. Finding another living being in their midsts was what had startled Belina. What had almost made her shriek was the horrifying state he was in. The mole was so thin that even his thick fur couldn't hide the hills and valleys of his ribs. Sickly pale runnels of scar tissue seemed like strings across his chest holding his bones together.

What was truly frightening, though, was the poor creature's face.

The side of his countenance that she could see (for he pressed the other against the wall as Mouse struggled to free what was in his grip) was a horrifying mess of infected flesh surrounding a grievous gash that had opened his face from cheek to jaw. His breath wheezed through the unnatural opening and a perpetual wetness seeped from between the exposed teeth to collect in a phlemy film. He turned a little toward the sound of alarm she made, trying to find her shape in the dark with a small, dully gleaming eye that had been turned toward the wall. The other eye was crusted shut with a kind of miasma from the wound that was eating away at half his face.

After a few moments, Mouse gave up trying to retrieve what Mole held and went to kick at and rebundle the loose bits of bedding strewn about. Belina was left with Mole cowering against the wall still trying half blindly to understand what she was. Knowing not what else to do, she reached hesitantly for the long-clawed hand that clutched so fiercely. He drew back sharply at her touch trying, it seemed, to become part of the stone itself the way he pressed against it. Belina looked at the chalked notes nearest and hummed a few bars, filling the silence as she reached to touch him again. Seeming almost mesmerized by the sound she made, he let her take his hand in hers and peel open the long claws of his fingers to find the bit of chalkstone he gripped so dearly.

* * *

Somehow, Belina finally made Mouse understand that the reason Mole slept so fitfully when he should have been deep in hibernation was because he was wracked with a wasting fever. It most likely came from the wound on his face which was probably poisoning him on the inside worse than its outward affliction.

They managed to get Mole to lay down and he instantly fell into a fretful excuse for sleep. Mouse indicated she wanted Belina to stay and then scurried away. Belina drowsed in the semi-darkness created by the biolumen but roused suddenly to find Mole reaching out, his clawed fingers questing for the bit of chalk. Putting her hand over his to still him, Belina made comforting sounds hoping he would stay quiet. He was completely stilled by her touch, more from fear than anything she was sure. Curling her fingers around the curve of his claws, she made the gesture of holding his hand rather than trapping it and began sing the notes she had seen on the walls. From a posture of rigidly, Mole became completely supine under the influence of her voice. Before long, he had drifted quietly away into a deeper, healing slumber.

The biolumin died away and Belina was left in the absolute dark. It seemed to have have weight and bore down on her with a weight that slowly suffocates. She had not seen the sun in days for there had been a heavy snowstorm that had kept her and Mouse enclosed. It had been to escape such confines that they had descended into Mole's tunnels. Now Belina only found herself longing for the little den above that, at least, was not below the earth.

Then, almost as if some spirit had sensed her longing, she perceived a dim glow in that could only have been noticed in the total absence of light. It drew her like a moth and she drifted out of Mole's cavern seeking the source. That it could find her through the many twists and turns that Belina walked was unbelievable.

The sun was streaming through a hole high in the crumbled ceiling of a wide tunnel.

There was snow beneath it in a small mound and she saw water dripping down slowly. It was warm enough above that the snow was melting and had this portal to the outside world had opened. Belina reached her arms into the light wanting to embrace the slight warmth it radiated. She stepped into the small mound of melting snow on the tunnel floor to bathe her whole body in the welcome glow but gasped and stepped back quickly when her foot encountered a silky smoothness that was not ice.

Squinting into the light reflecting off the whiteness, she saw a brilliant feather in her footprint. Reaching to touch it, she found it connected to another, and another. Belina started to brush the snow away quickly, her eyes already brimming with tears as she uncovered a wing. But before she could go further, Mouse suddenly came through the sunlit opening and, with the aid of her small, clawed hands and feet, climbed nimbly down the wall and pulled Belina sharply away from the winged thing buried in the snow. Mouse felt nothing but rancor toward anything avian and, ignoring Belina's distress, forced her away and back into the darkness.

* * *

Whether it was night or day when she crept away, Belina could not tell for the perpetual darkness. The pale light that fell over the heap of snow still bearing her footprints in the wide tunnel seemed to speak of moon glow on a clear night. When she looked up with hope of seeing the sky, she found that it was the glassy grains in a swath of stone that reflected the light down from a curve that hid aught else from her sight.

But there was brilliance before her that defied the sky. Belina knelt and began to scoop the slushy snow away beyond the wing she had discovered before. A crumpled tangle of sodden plumage revealed itself, one wing outspread, the other almost protectively thrown over. Belina pushed the wing away, her tears adding to the cold wet of of the short feathers where she now buried her face. The darkness, the cold, the misery inherent in Mole, it was all wretched out of her in this, a feathered denzion of the summer sky brought down to die in the dark muck of a winter hole.

Then, when her sobs quieted, another sound intruded. It was the muffled thump of a slowly, oh so slowly, beating heart.


	5. Chapter 5

He couldn't sleep, couldn't slide into that deep, black hollow of hibernation. Maybe it was the consuming ache of his face, the wounds that wouldn't heal as he endlessly pushed his face through the damp earth, always tunneling; maybe it was the strange sound that plagued his mind, the sound he felt compelled to mark on the walls lest it overfill him; and now maybe it was her, this little, soft creature who could sing the sound and whose cool hands worked with things mouse gave her to sooth the pain that, perhaps, was the thing that kept him from sleep.

He could feel Mouse curled warm against his back, lost in her own dreams. It was not good for her to spend so much time in the dark, he knew. She was a creature of the upper world, needed the air and the light. He wanted to take her back to the little den above as he usually did, but that meant the pale one, one who seemed as though she needed to be hidden away and protected, would go with her.

As if they weren't going to be gone soon. Mole could feel the earth warming through the long, sensitive claws as he raked them lightly across the dirt beside him. Even now he could tell, deep in the earth though he was, that the first, chilly spring rain was melting the last of the snow.

He was so tired. If he slept deeply at all, it was when she was near humming his music, threading her soft fingers through the velvet of his coat. But she was absent so often now that he was more awake than not. Where was she now? His dark piercing eyes could could not find her form, only the faint glow of his chalk marks on the walls. He dug his claws further into the soft earth and let a strange sixth sense reach out, combing the twisting passages of his world for the brilliance in the dark that was Belina.

Mole jerked back suddenly when he encountered smothering mud. The dry winter had turned the soil brittle; the slow soak of the late snow had been interrupted by the deluge of spring rain. The tunnels were collapsing!

Springing out of the burrow he twisted through the labyrinth as only its singular architect could, stopping only when the scent and sound of rushing water came to him as it spilled down an intersecting tunnel like a raging river. Belina stood hugging the wall at the very edge of the churning water, measuring the gap between herself and what he could only see as a shifting dance of color on the the other side. Though his eyesight was poor in in the light that broke in from the collapsing tunnel roof, he could see that it was reaching toward her, and every line of her body spoke of a readiness to leap the river between them and fall into its embrace.

Mole snatched her just as she made the attempt, feeling her airy weight lift him forward. He caught his claws deep in the hard earth of the tunnel wall and used what strength he had to pull her back. Belina fell heavy in his arms and they watched as at the same moment the other across the water leapt up and, with a flurry of rustling air, disappeared through a light-filled gap before the tunnel collapsed in upon itself and all that was before them was a sealed wall of heavy mud.

Only now, with the trembling form of Belina locked in his embrace as he lay again in the deep dark of the den, only now could he feel the heaviness of hibernation come over all his being. He breathed deeply of her scent, tumbling down the black well of restoring sleep, wondering only that she didn't hum his sweet tune instead of weep.

* * *

Later, days and nights, a timeless later, Mole tunneled upward from the depths of a slumber that could not resist the waking earth. He felt the tangle of roots reaching into the soil as at the same time there sprouted life reaching for the sun. Everywhere he sensed life breaking free of winter's hold. Claws gently kneading the dry dirt into whirls and tracks, he began to map the labyrinth anew.

It took him a few moments of to realize that his mind was clear, that the architecture he imagined was not pitted with pain, the tunnels did not peter out because all he could hear was strange music. Mole could find life again with everything else in the flourishing of spring!

There was one, though, who was not tending toward renewal. It was as if in capturing her away from that uncertain escape, Mole had become a smothering vine that sapped all of Belina's vitality. She lay in the dark next to him, a pale wisp of life in his strange sight with Mouse glowing nearby - that enduring creature with all her strength. She combed her paws through Belina's hair, knowing no way to restore her friend beyond that fond gesture.

Mole knew, though. He leapt suddenly, resolute, and dug his claws deep in waking earth. He began to tunnel up.

By the time he laid her in the grass, new with buds and shoots breaking forth, the sun was just burning a line on the horizon. The light was already making his dim vision useless. It would be moments before that glare turned into a blazing horror that wanted to tear its way past his eyelids and into his skull. Yet he stayed, stayed almost beyond that moment so that he could press her hand against the ragged scars on his face and feel the twitch in her fingers before he plunged, as one thrown from on high, back into the dark of the only world he would ever know.

If not for that last moment, though, he would have never felt the brush of feathers that fell over her with the light of the sun.

* * *

In the black of the tunnels, the sudden sense of loneliness that wrapped around him might have undone all the good of a deep, dreamless sleep. He might have broken completely under that crushing weight but for the cool press of a palm, the soothing brush of a touch through velveteen fur.

It was Mouse.

It had always been Mouse.

The bursting colors of too much light faded from his eyes to be replaced by the soft glow that, he realized, had really been all that he was missing. Mole pulled her into his arms and opened himself to the her light.

* * *

" _All beauty must have its imperfections, all happiness its share of sorrow_."  
― Susan Kay, Phantom


End file.
